


Cry Awake

by Ray_Writes



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BAMF Laurel Lance, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e22 This is Your Sword, F/M, Metahuman Laurel Lance, Olicity Breakup, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-03
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 07:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29185770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ray_Writes/pseuds/Ray_Writes
Summary: When the team is sealed in Nanda Parbat's dungeon to be exposed to the Alpha-Omega virus, it triggers something within Laurel that causes Oliver to abandon the plan entirely.
Relationships: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen
Comments: 17
Kudos: 36





	Cry Awake

**Author's Note:**

> I have no explanation for this one besides finding season 3's finale lackluster and also Laurel never getting her actual powers lackluster. Thanks very much to Okoriwadsworth for beta-reading this one and for suggesting the title. Enjoy!

Laurel could not believe this was happening. After everything they had been through, after all the years. This was how it ended? Him turning his back on her and the others, sealing them in so they could await their deaths.

“Oliver, we believed in you!” She shouted after his retreating back, and he made no indication he had heard. She supposed Oliver couldn’t hear anything anymore. Oliver was dead, replaced by Al Sah-him.

She had known better than to believe Malcolm. But part of her, still, had wanted to believe in Oliver just one more time. No matter all the betrayals that had come before. Her damned foolish heart.

The others had joined her in crying out, Felicity especially. Tears were stinging at the corners of Laurel’s eyes, her voice ragged as her breath quickened against her will. Any second, they were about to have a bio weapon pumped into their cell, and no matter what he’d just said to Malcolm about it being quick, Laurel doubted it would be pleasant.

“What the hell are you doing?” She demanded, and something within her cracked. Laurel didn’t notice, her panic and anger and grief a blinding tempest within her as she watched Oliver join Ra’s side, off to bind Nyssa to a life of servitude and so much worse. God, she could _scream._

And Laurel did. “Don’t do this! _Oliver_!”

The glass beyond the bars rattled and then shattered under the unexpected burst of air and sound that left her lungs. She saw the satisfied smirk drop off Ra’s face and Oliver — or Al Sah-him — whip back around to stare in total shock.

Felicity staggered back away from her and the others clapped hands over their ears in reaction to the sheer volume. Laurel broke off with a gasp as one of the League began to cough and choke.

Ra’s shouted in Arabic, but there was no use; the virus was escaping through the broken glass out into the corridor instead, and she watched as the men who had been acting as escorts to the Demon and his chosen Heir collapsed one-by-one. Her shock morphed to horror watching them fall like that to the virus, and knowing they were next…

Except, why weren’t they dying?

Laurel could admit, she felt just slightly dizzy, and she didn’t know if that was from the virus or from whatever the hell had just left her mouth. It hadn’t been her sonic choker; that had been taken from her along with her nightstick. But she remained standing. So did the others, who were looking around and at her with confusion clear on their faces.

Ra’s gave another order, this time to Sarab, the one Oliver had known before all this, Tatsu’s husband. He must have been inoculated when she was, and appeared to be one of the only survivors amongst those League members who had been just beyond the cell. Sarab swept what remained of the glass away from the cheek door, which he wrenched open before marching in to grab her. Laurel struggled backwards, and John moved to try and intervene, but Sarab drew a knife under her neck, and her friends fell back. Laurel was forced out into the room beyond the cell and thrown to the ground in front of Ra’s al Ghul. She stood back up immediately, glaring at the man who had bound her sister to his order and abused her teacher and friend.

“Most curious. I have heard whispers of enhanced individuals these last months. I did not realize your band counted one among them, and by your faces neither did you.” The ancient man watched her, his considering look turning to a frown. “You have cost me men, contaminated my fortress. Nanda Parbat will have to be evacuated until it can be determined clean of the Alpha-Omega virus. No enemy has ever routed the League from it’s seat of power, much less one woman.”

Laurel’s lip curled. “Then I guess that’s your mistake for underestimating what a woman’s capable of. Doubting who you made your Heir?”

“You will be silent,” he ordered, eyes flashing. Laurel was just relieved to find her voice had returned to normal, though part of her wondered how she could manage that powerful scream again. It was the only weapon they had.

“Somehow you and your allies have been inoculated,” Ra’s continued. “You would have survived the virus and been able to launch a surprise attack against me. In a way, this is better. I now have the chance to ensure that your annoying persistence is taken care of, permanently.” Ra’s then turned to Al Sah-him, whose face through all of this had remained passive. Yet the split second before his eyes jumped to Ra’s face, Laurel could have sworn they had held emotion. And as far as she knew, fear wasn’t something the Heir to the Demon was supposed to feel.

“Al Sah-him, we will postpone the ceremony to make you my son as well as my Heir, as I have one final task for you to prove your loyalty to me. Kill the friends of Oliver Queen, starting with this woman.”

There was a beat of silence. Laurel wasn’t sure if she was expected to beg or protest or declare that he would never do any such thing, but she had already done all of those things to no avail when Al Sah-him had sealed them all in to die. Though, like Ra’s had said, they weren’t dead. They’d been inoculated against the virus. How was that possible, unless…?

Her arms were grabbed by Sarab, and she was forced into kneeling. Al Sah-him drew his sword, stepping forward. Laurel looked up at him, refusing to bow her head. If there was some bit of Oliver in there, then he was just going to have to live with seeing the light blink out of her eyes. She wasn’t about to make this easier.

The sword raised. Laurel drew in a breath, willing something like before to happen, some wild, crazy miracle that would get them all out of this.

The Heir turned on the Demon and thrust his sword at him. It was deftly blocked.

Laurel’s breath stuttered in her throat, no scream emerging. “...Ollie?”

He didn’t answer her, eyes on Ra’s. That was fair. She didn’t think it was remotely a good idea to take your eyes off the leader of the League of Assassins when you’d just tried to kill him. “You suspected?”

“I am always prepared, against anyone. Even my Heir,” Ra’s stated. “But for this woman? This woman is for whom you would throw away all I have given you?”

“All you have given? You have no idea everything I have lost to your plans!”

“You have lost nothing! You are Al Sah-Him—”

“My _name_ is Oliver Queen!” Oliver roared back. “‘This woman’ has a name, too, Dinah Laurel Lance. And if you knew anything about me, you would have realized that mattered.”

The two both moved to attack, swords clanging. The ferocious pace of strikes and parries was difficult to keep up with, and that was forgetting everything that had just shifted regarding who was on what side.

But that all would wait. It had to. Laurel drove an elbow up into Sarab’s side, joining the fight. She wasn’t going to leave Oliver to take this all on by himself, not when he needed to live so he could explain a few things to the rest of them.

\---

There had been nothing for it. Oliver had felt Ra’s eyes on his back and Malcolm’s on his front, each with their own expectations of him. Each needing him to follow through with the act for those expectations to be fulfilled.

But he had only been able to look into Laurel’s eyes. That sharp, defiant green, not giving him an inch even when she was being forced to kneel and wait for death. She hadn’t been afraid, hadn’t regretted the fact that with one shout, she had blown all the planning he and Malcolm had done to Hell. If anything, she would be proud if she knew.

What else could he have done? This was Laurel. He had been dreading having to kill Nyssa and grateful when Ra’s had stayed his order, but to kill _Laurel_? He’d sooner turn the sword on himself.

Ra’s had the Alpha-Omega virus, however, and so that wasn’t an option. He couldn’t use the plane to send the virus and the Demon crashing with him, so it would have to come down to his blade against Ra’s. That had not gone so well the last time, but it was all he had.

He heard grunts of pain behind him and a metallic clatter. Laurel had gotten Maseo on the ground and tossed the keys to the cell door through the bars at John. It didn’t promise him much aid. None of the others were armed, and in the arena of sword fighting, Ra’s was the master. It had been foolish, thinking training with Malcolm would do any good. Not even training under Ra’s had given him the skills to be better than the man.

He thought he heard a distant _boom_ like thunder, and to Oliver it fell on his ears like an omen as Ra’s lunged forward—

Only to be flung back against the wall as Laurel unleashed another of those screams from her lips, teeth baring as she stepped in front of Oliver. Ra’s struggled to his feet and leapt to the side to be out of the immediate range of this strange ability so like what Laurel had used on him on the roof nights ago but so much stronger.

The Demon did not launch another attack. He stared at his sword, cracked in two, with a numb shock.

It was not the action of an honorable warrior that Oliver took next. It was the action of a survivor. In the ancient man’s distraction, he stabbed under his guard and twisted the blade as Ra’s had once done to him.

Ra’s al Ghul slumped down the wall, blood smearing it behind him. “I have still won,” he wheezed. “You are now… the Demon Head.”

“No, Ra’s, you lost,” Oliver said. “Your bloodline will not continue, and my city will be safe.” A man who had caused the scale of suffering Ra’s had over the centuries did not deserve to believe he had achieved his ends.

But still, Oliver recited the League’s last rites as the Demon’s eyes slipped closed. It was the very least he would offer. Once done, he allowed himself to look away.

It was Laurel he turned to first. She was only just behind and to the right of him, stance set fists still clenched the way they had been when she had screamed to force Ra’s back from him. He had no idea what to say, how to even begin. “Laurel…”

She seemed to recognize his struggle and slowly stood, one corner of her lips turning up. “And here nobody would have thought I could still save your ass, huh?”

Oliver blinked, and then dropped his head as a grin spread across his lips and a laugh rumbled in his chest. Trust Laurel to take the reveal of his true allegiances in stride the way she did almost anything.

“You always do,” he told her sincerely. Whether it was with legal arguments in a courtroom or a bit of piping in the tunnels under their city, that would always be true. Oliver looked up and past her shoulder, his smiling fading as he took in the sight of the others standing there in varying stages of shock and suspicion. Felicity’s cheeks were still wet with tears, and he felt guilt at the sight. He had put them all through so much.

“I’m glad you’re all okay,” he told them.

“How are we okay?” John demanded.

“Because I inoculated you,” Malcolm revealed. “Of course, that wasn’t supposed to be discovered until after the plane had left.”

“I don’t understand,” Felicity spoke up, and her voice was thick from crying. “You were still on our side, but you were going to let Ra’s take a plane full of a bio weapon to Starling?”

“The plane wasn’t going to make it to Starling,” he stated as matter-of-factly as he could manage. He watched her eyes widen behind her glasses. John’s frown only deepened, and Ray’s eyebrows pulled together as he shifted from one foot to the other.

Beside him, Laurel crossed her arms. “What have I said about suicide missions? What have all of us said?”

He was saved from replying by a crackle of light and rush of wind. “Hey, guys! Oh, Oliver. I thought you said you wouldn’t be here?” Barry asked, once again running late to do much of anything. He would’ve been right on time for the original plan.

“Plans changed,” Oliver said simply. He watched the younger man take in Ra’s on the floor with clear discomfort written on his face.

“Right… yeah, is there a reason a whole lot of people seem to be dead in this place? I mean, that guy was definitely stabbed. By you, I’m guessing,” he added, gesturing with an arm to the sword Oliver held slackly in his grip.

“The virus spread through the whole fortress?” Laurel asked. “Oh God, Nyssa. Ollie, was she inoculated?”

Oliver grit his teeth for a moment. “There wasn’t a good opportunity…” He couldn’t stand the way her mouth fell open in a horrified gasp. “Flash, did you see a woman about our age, dark hair, dressed for a ceremony?”

“Not on my way in. Give me a second.” The speedster dashed off and then was back moments later. “She’s okay! Found her standing on a balcony, so I ran her out front and told her to wait for you guys.”

“Good,” Oliver said, and placed a hand on Laurel’s arm as she sagged beside him in relief.

“So, I haven’t been inoculated against the mysterious airborne illness. Any idea if I should be rushing back to STAR Labs?” Barry asked next.

“If you do, take Laurel with you,” Oliver decided. Before she could do more than turn a startled look on him, he explained, “Something happened just now that should have been impossible. Seems like something up your team’s alley.”

“Uh, okay.” Barry turned to her. “No time like the present, right? Just keep your eyes closed and your head tucked in.” He scooped her into his arms and rushed away. Oliver’s fingers twitched at his side once watching the streak of lightning trail off down the corridor and away.

In the quiet Barry and Laurel’s departure left, Malcolm stepped forward. “Well, Oliver, it may not have been exactly as planned, but we have succeeded. And I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you on this. I’ll accompany you all back to Starling to say goodbye to Thea. Then…” he stooped and drew the ring off of Ra’s limp finger.

“Enjoy the title, for how little that comes with it,” Oliver told him. “And you can thank me by leaving Thea alone from now on.” He was glad Thea had not had a hand in getting her father executed, yes, but he wasn’t about to let Malcolm have another chance to manipulate her or ensnare her in one of his schemes.

Malcolm stood, back ramrod straight. “I see. Then I suppose the next time we meet, it is as enemies.”

“If you come to my city as one, yes.”

Malcolm nodded stiffly, then walked away.

“I guess we should go, then,” Ray said, looking at the three of them that remained and waiting for their consensus.

“Yeah,” John grunted, moving past Oliver without even looking at him.

“Actually, if you both could give me and Oliver a minute,” Felicity said.

Ray’s expression turned pinched, but he said, “We’ll gather the supplies the League confiscated.” He followed John down the corridor and out of sight.

Oliver licked his lips and turned his focus to Felicity. He honestly hadn’t been anticipating seeing her after locking them all in the cell. He wasn’t sure what happened now, how he made up for the hurt his betrayal — however fake — had caused.

“Well, glad that’s all over,” Felicity began after a moment of neither of them speaking.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed quickly.

“Are you? Cause you were planning to be dead about now, right? I mean, what exactly happens now?”

So she didn’t have any better ideas than he did. Oliver wracked his brains. “We, uh, we go home. We check in with STAR Labs to see if they have an explanation for what Laurel did with her voice. We—”

“Yeah, that’s the- the thing,” Felicity interrupted him. “Laurel, I mean.”

He frowned. “What about her?”

“You were going to die. You had it all set, and no amount of my begging or being in danger was going to dissuade you — but Ra’s looks at Laurel for more than five seconds, and suddenly you are ready to go to war.”

Oliver’s mouth opened then closed. What was she trying to suggest? “I wasn’t going to kill her.”

“I’m not saying you should have! That’d be really awful!” Felicity said. She took a step back and sniffed once through her nose. “All I am saying is that you _never_ panic when I’m in danger the way you do when Laurel is in danger. And that’s the kind of thing that makes a girl wonder.”

“You weren’t in danger,” Oliver said, even though it was a gross oversimplification. Technically any of them could have died had Ra’s decided he didn’t want to use the Alpha-Omega virus and ordered them executed instead. Oliver would have stepped in, of course, but without that strange scream Laurel had produced… He shook himself from those thoughts. This was about him and Felicity, and he didn’t need to give her more reasons to bring up Laurel. “I would have protected you just the same if you had been.”

“You would’ve protected me, would’ve died for me, I get it. Just like Ray, just like Cooper. I have a type, clearly.” She waved hands impatiently. “Except, I can’t keep doing this. When I thought Cooper killed himself all those years ago, the guilt was unbearable for like the longest time. I didn’t let myself make friends, get close to anybody, because I was scared I would do something else that got them in trouble and they would die. Then you and John started showing up at my office… we both know how that went.”

He nodded, throat feeling stuck. This sounded like goodbye.

“Oliver, if you had died doing this, it would have destroyed me. I would’ve had to move, start my life completely over, try and forget everything that came before just like after everything at MIT. But so much worse. I don’t want to go through something like that ever again.”

“So this is goodbye,” he guessed.

She nodded, eyes glassy with new, brimming tears. “I think it has to be. I can’t keep forgiving you for putting me through this.” She snorted, then started to walk to the archway. “That’s another difference between me and Laurel.”

“Felicity, this was never about you versus Laurel,” Oliver said, turning to keep her in his sights.

She stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “I know. I know you believe that.” Then she continued on her way.

There wasn’t much else he could do but watch her go. It was her choice at the end of the day, and unlike how he’d behaved during her and Ray’s relationship, he needed to respect this decision. He could understand it, in a way. Hadn’t he been growing tired of this life and of losing people?

But then, standing beside Barry to take on an evil speedster, fighting Ra’s with Laurel there to back him up when he might otherwise have lost… who else could really love this life? Who else would _want_ to?

\---

Laurel had been treated to a round of brief introductions — or reintroductions, in the case of Cisco and Detective West — before having her blood drawn by Dr. Caitlin Snow.

“Can I really be one of these metahumans if I wasn’t in the city when the accelerator exploded?” Laurel asked.

“It’s happened at least once with Deathbolt,” Barry explained. “I guess if we want to be really sure…” But he trailed off with a grimace rather than finish the thought.

“What?”

He shook his head. “There’s no point talking to him. Caitlin will have the answer soon enough.”

The answer was that she was a metahuman. “I still don’t get how I could have powers that are almost exactly like my choker necklace,” Laurel maintained.

Barry frowned. “Okay, maybe we do need to talk to him.”

This ‘him’ was Dr. Harrison Wells — or, as she was informed, Professor Eobard Thawne, a time traveler from the future who had stolen the identity of a prominent scientist of their time. That was strange enough, but stranger still was watching the somewhat disheveled man stuck inside a glass box look upon her with recognition sparking in his eyes despite them having never met.

“My, my, the Black Canary… you’ve certainly taken your time,” he greeted with a grin that stretched wide over his face.

“So she’s supposed to be a metahuman?” Barry asked brusquely, and even if she hadn’t just been told this man was Nora Allen’s murderer, she would have been able to read the hostility coming off her younger friend with no issue.

“Is the Black Canary, _the_ Scream Queen, supposed to be a metahuman?” Thawne rolled his eyes. “Yes, obviously. That’s like asking if she and Green Arrow are supposed to be ga-ga for each other — maybe there’s hope for that one yet, if this has finally happened.”

“Why are my powers just like what Cisco built me?” Laurel asked, her face hot but unwilling to verbally acknowledge what he’d just said about her and — she could only guess — Oliver.

“Well, best guess is that he saw a vision of your powers with _his_ powers, and tried to make something that would replicate it.”

“My powers?” Cisco asked faintly where he stood by the door controls.

“Oh, Cisco. Do you really think normal people have visions of their deaths from another timeline?”

“Okay, we got our answers,” Barry decided, steering his friend away in order to shut the door to the strange room holding the cell. “Let’s regroup upstairs.”

Some of her team had arrived back on the plane when they returned to the cortex: Oliver and Nyssa, the former Laurel was relieved had not come to find them downstairs in the middle of all this. Nyssa had taken her hair down from the up-do it had been styled into, but she still wore the robes she was going to be forcibly married in.

“Hey, I’m glad you’re okay,” Laurel told her.

“And I have you to thank, as my Betrothed tells me,” Nyssa responded, and behind her Oliver pulled a face.

“Yeah, I think the wedding might be off,” Laurel said, lips twitching as Nyssa gave a theatrical sigh.

“Then I shall have to find more suitable clothes to wear as well as a place to stay. Nanda Parbat will be unsafe for those not inoculated for at least a day, perhaps longer.”

“You are welcome to my spare room back home,” Laurel promised her. She looked to Oliver, “Speaking of, how are we getting there?” And where were the others?

“We’ll have to catch a train,” he answered. “The plane dropped Nyssa and I off in Central, but it’s already on its way to Starling without us.”

Laurel winced. She supposed John wasn’t in any rush to be around Oliver after what happened with Lyla, but she would have assumed Felicity would have insisted they stay. “What about Tatsu?”

“She took Maseo with her since he was knocked out. Hopefully they have a chance now to work through things.” He didn’t sound very convinced, or there was some other reason he was having trouble meeting her eyes.

The trip back on the train was a quiet one. There was a sense of something unfinished in the air. Laurel didn’t know if it was just the lack of a year-end city-wide catastrophe or the time traveler’s words rattling around in her head. She sat beside Nyssa and watched the miles roll by, wondering what Oliver was thinking across the aisle. The three of them garnered more than one curious look from passengers, probably down to the fact they had all had to borrow STAR Labs branded sweats to make the trip back in. Laurel had gotten away with just the bottoms at least, as her black halter top under her jacket wasn’t too recognizable.

They got off at their home station, stopping just outside it to orient themselves. “So…” Laurel said.

“So,” Oliver echoed.

“You heading to the loft to check in with Thea?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s probably best,” he agreed.

“And then?”

“Laurel, I’m fine,” he said. “Really. You don’t need to worry I’ll… it was just to defeat Ra’s.”

“You could have allowed me to kill him,” Nyssa stated.

“And you could have relied on your friends in general, instead of Malcolm,” Laurel added before Oliver could respond to that. “If we really matter.”

His face crumpled for a moment. “You do. Laurel, you—” Oliver scrubbed a hand down his face, struggling with something. Something to do with her. Or them? “There are things I need to figure out, about me, about how all this works now that the League is gone.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Really?” When she nodded, Oliver relaxed. “Thank you.”

“I’m always going to be here, Ollie. Take the time you need.” It was a safe promise, one that committed nothing more than her presence, which she’d sworn to him years ago over a grave. She would wait for him to untangle just who Oliver Queen was and what he wanted now that he wasn’t pretending to be the Heir to the Demon or the brooding vigilante before she committed anything more. No matter what some man from the future said.

Though she couldn’t quite resist pulling him into a hug, one he returned with a hand holding the back of her head and the other arm around the small of her back. “Welcome home, Ollie.”

“Good to be home.” He held on just a moment longer, then pulled back. With a last smile, Laurel turned and left with Nyssa going one way on the sidewalk, while Oliver went the other way towards his sister’s.

“You will have to demonstrate this new ability to me soon,” Nyssa commented as they walked side-by-side.

“Sure. We’ll just go get changed.” Regular crime wasn’t going to stop just because Ra’s wasn’t bringing a plague to their city. And she had promised Oliver that she would keep it safe in his absence.

Their lives were stranger and stranger every day, and other people came and went into and out of it. And who would have thought at the start of this year that she would be the vigilante in the streets while he went home and minded family? Yet Laurel wasn’t quite ready to give up on him yet; she had just barely lost faith in him in that cell, and it had broken a dam inside her unleashing a power she would have to work hard to control. But Oliver had shown himself still to be someone she could count on, much as he struggled to count on anybody but himself in return. She hoped that was something he knew she could handle now.

And anyway, that time traveler had said the _Green_ Arrow. As far as she was concerned, that meant they had time.


End file.
